Excerpt from “In Plutonian Seas”

A few weeks ago, I completed a new sf short story.  It’s called “In Plutonian Seas.”  As is my normal practice, I will be submitting this story to a variety of print SF markets, rather than making it available (at least initially) online.  That process has already started and if I manage to make a sale, I’ll let you know right away.

To prime the pump, here’s an excerpt from the story:

In Plutonian Seas

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a hundred battles. Then the victory is yours.  It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or demons, nor heaven or hell.”

 Buddha

“For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”

                                                                                                            Khalil Gibran

Aboard FCS Trident

Pluto, Sputnik Planitia

Two hundred meters below the ice surface

June 15, 2144 (EUT)

0400 hours (local)

 

Alicia Yang Lifelogger File #30:

It was Marta Sepulveda’s idea to quarantine Commander Skellen in his quarters, for his own good.  And for ours.  It was hard but it was the right thing to do…even Marta the Bitch Goddess said if we didn’t, the skipper would be driving Trident right back to the Wreck again.

Nobody wanted that.

I’ve taken the liberty of downloading and synchronizing everybody’s lifelogger files for the last few days, so as to put together some kind of chronological report on what happened.  Win Blakely calls it CYA or a form of self-justification but we all have a responsibility to make factual reports during the mission.  If we don’t, Frontier Corps could easily send another unsuspecting crew right into the very same trap.

As it stands now, the vote is three to one, in favor of boring back through the ice, getting to the surface, somehow driving back to the lander and returning to orbit.  From down here, comms with Fort Apache in orbit are pretty spotty, so they don’t have a clue as to what we’ve run into here. 

I just hope they can figure out a way to treat us, all of us, before this thing, this infection or whatever it is, gets worse.

Here’s the first of the lifelogger files I patched together…

 

Joe Skellen Lifelogger File #27 (appended):

I was looking over some old maps and sea charts when the sonar contact alarm sounded.  Okay, so I like old maps.  The Corps psychs tried to convince me, after Trieste and Europa, that hanging out with old maps was symbolic of me wanting to run away from Kristen, from my boy Tyler and all that.  Can you believe that?  Really, I just happen to like old maps.

Trident had been cruising serenely at thirty knots, in level trim, when that first alarm sounded.  I guess I had dozed off because it startled me.

I realized as I startled myself awake that it was the sonar alarm.  Trident had detected something ahead, something big from the looks of it.  Auto-helm was engaged and she had already begun slowing.

I came fully awake and rubbed my eyes.  I studied the sonar plot.  Whatever it was, it was a large object, some ten thousand meters dead ahead.  

Probably a chunk of ice from the surface crust…broken off, I surmised.  From the nav console, I could see Trident had just about made her first waypoint coordinates, hundreds of meters below the ice at Sputnik Planitia.  I got on the intercom.

“STO 1 to the command deck…Marta, get up here to the command deck at once….”

I disengaged autohelm and took the controls myself, slowing the ship to a crawl.  I didn’t want to run Trident into something this big without studying it first.

Sepulveda’s head popped into the compartment a few moments later.

“What gives, Captain?”

“Take a look at the plot.”

Marta Sepulveda—our STO 1 and chief engineer-- slid into the second seat and studied the sonar return.  “What is it, Skipper…one of your shipwrecks?  Can we get a little closer?”

“We can try,” I said.  I ignored the jibe.  It’s no secret Marta and I don’t get along but that’s for later. 

Slowly, Trident closed on her target, dead ahead.   The subsurface ocean below Pluto’s ice surface was completely devoid of light, black as night.  But the returns from Trident’s sonar indicated that the object could be something worth investigating.

Marta studied the plot.  “Doesn’t look like ice to me…too convoluted.” 

Eventually, I brought us to a complete stop, five hundred meters away. 

We discussed our options.  Alicia came up too.  She’s an astroglaciologist and she said it didn’t look like ice to her either.  Both Doll-Face and the Bitch Goddess concurred.  “We need to check this out.  What about Uncle?”

“This is about as well as our sonar can resolve the target,” I agreed.  “From the returns, it seems to be a large platform, with some kind of structures on top.  I’m getting faint returns around the main one, too, smaller objects of some type.  Get Uncle ready, both of them.  Win can help you.  And Alicia, get back to the galley and get me some of that amunofen…I’ve got a splitting headache.”

Marta disappeared into the main gangway and headed aft to G deck.  That’s where we kept Uncle One and Two…our little robotic ships that often did initial recon on objects and sites of interest.  Alicia came back a few moments later. 

“You too, Skipper?  My skull’s been about to crack all morning.”  We both washed down several pills and concentrated on getting the feed from Uncle. 

As soon Marta called up and said the drones were ready, I started inching us forward, cranking up our spot and floodlights, trying to bring as much illumination to bear on the targets as possible.  It was like shining headlights through a dense fog.

“Launching Uncle One and Two, “came Marta’s voice.  Presently, the murmur of their jets could be heard nearby.

“Got ‘em,” Alicia said.  “I have full control…both bots…steering straight ahead…you want sonar, Skipper?”

“Sound away,” I said.  “I’ve got nothing but scrambled eggs on my scope.”

 “I’m calling up Uncle One,” I told everybody.  By now, even Win Blakely had come up to the command center.  “Let’s see what the drones can find out.”  I pressed a few keys on my wristpad and the underwater bots surged forward, their jets whirring gently.  They both plunged into the murk and were soon lost to view.  Blakely patched in to the bot’s sensors.  Soon, the whole team was getting sonar, EM and visuals back from Uncle One.

What we saw made my throat go dry.

It was some kind of shipwreck.  No one could deny that.  In fact, it looked like a smashed-up, crumpled version of Trident herself.  You could see the borer lens up front…it looked like a broken dinner plate.  And the rest of the ship—you could only call it a ship—was broken into a misshapen hulk.  Treads along her hull had mostly come untracked.  Her stern pod was stove in like a beer can.  The hull had been breached in several places, like some kind of flooding casualty, like--

“What the—” said Marta.

“It’s a ship…like us--? Blakely muttered.  “I don’t—”

“Hey, just keep it down, will you?” I warned everybody.  “Everybody stay cool.”  Even as I said it, I could feel my own heart jackhammering in my chest.  And my head was about to split in two.”

Maybe I should pause here—  unintelligible noises in the background—okay…that’s better.  Looks like we lost Uncle Two…Win’s checking to see what happened but One’s still with us.  At this point, Alicia and Marta started arguing about our mission and I had to tell them to pipe down.  The mission parameters were simple enough to list…we all know ‘em by heart: land on Pluto at Sputnik Planitia and bore through the ice layer, penetrate subsurface ocean and conduct cruise science ops for ten Earth days, take samples, measure gross ocean properties, map currents, temperature profiles, chemical, salinity, brine…all that stuff.  Then we return safely to the surface.  Return to orbit and dock with Fort Apache.  Transmit all the raw data and experimental results on high-band to UNISPACE Gateway Station at Earth-Moon L2. 

That’s it.  It was after I had recited all that to Marta, Alicia and Win for about the millionth time that Marta pointed out something on Uncle One’s vid.  I looked.  It was some kind of lettering along the side of the sunken ship’s hull.  When I realized what it said—it was partly obscured by some kind of barnacle-like growth—my blood ran cold and my heart skipped about ten beats. 

T-R-I-E S-T-E.  Trieste.  The submersible I had nearly died in on the Europa Explorer mission in ’43. 

No way.  It couldn’t be—

-----

So that’s the excerpt.  This story is one that had been gnawing at me for several years so I finally got it down as a short story of about 10,000 words.  If this excerpt intrigues you, stay tuned for progress reports.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 30.  In this post, I’ll give you an update on my next book in the Farpool series, entitled The Farpool: Exodus.  By the way, my last uploaded book, The Farpool: Marauders of Seome, is doing pretty well online.  As of this writing (October 11), Smashwords is showing 173 downloads. 

See you October 30.

Phil B.